Hokkaido Milk bread with Tangzhong

 We knead to bake #3 : March 2013 -- Hokkaido Milk bread with Tangzhong

After last month's very difficult to "knead and laminate" recipe of Classic Croissants, this month's bread baking challenge was quite an easy one. Also, I had made this bread twice before. It has a very soft, cotton-like and pillowy in texture. The recipe is quite simple too. Chinese Tangzhong is like french roux... and the bread is Japanese milk bread... quite a fusion of cultures around the world ....isn't it :)  

Another picture.....

Receita de Mousse de maracujá (Passion fruit mousse -- eggless recipe)

Another exotic sounding recipe, yet a very simple one. This dessert recipe was suggested by a facebook friend Madhusmita. She is the last person whom I would expect to get a dessert recipe from ........ :) A very talented, beautiful lady who is my fitness role model  - I have got information about the right kind of food and the right exercises to get that coveted dress size, flawless skin or correct muscle tone over the years that I know her...since the old "orkut" days, I have never heard her advocating any dessert except for that one occasion where she praised this recipe and the one she herself learnt from her Brazilian friend.

It is a very tasty, not so sweet with hint of citrus flavors and crunch of the passion fruit seeds, and the best part is you just mix it up and chill in the refrigerator and you have a large batch ready in minutes for a large party. You can make it in a glass bowl/bundt pan and slice it up in individual portions or serve it in decorative glasses and stemware.

Ingredients:

• 6-9 passion fruits
• 1 can (375 gm) condensed milk
• 1 cup of cream
• 1/2 cup water 
• 1 sachet unflavored gelatin
• 2 tsp sugar

Recipe:

• Cut about 6 passion fruits in half and remove the pulp with a spoon in a cup. You need about 1 cup(200 ml) of the juice. 

• Chill the bowl and the blades of the cake whisk for about 15 minutes before you start. Take cream in the chilled bowl. Add 2 tsp sugar in the cream and whisk the cream at medium speed till you get stiff peaks. Keep that aside.(in a refrigerator)

• Heat water in microwave till it is warm(not hot). Dissolve a pack of gelatin in the warm water. Keep it aside.

• Add condensed milk to the whipped cream and mix it well. 

• Add the passion fruit pulp and the water with dissolved gelatin in it.
• Mix it really well.

• Pour into serving bowl, or individual bowls/stemware.
• Garnish with more passion fruit pulp and mint leaves.
• Chill for about 2 hours before serving. 

Quantity:

•  Makes about 10 servings. I put about 3 tbsp in 5 of the glasses and about 3.5-4 tbsp in 5 of the glasses.
• I think 2 tbsp serving is quite filling after a party meal. So I guess this quantity can also be made to about 15 serving portions (of 2 tbsps each) 

Notes:

• You can strain out the passion fruit seeds thru' a sieve.
• You can garnish with any other fruit too.
• If you make it in a cake tin, you can invert it in a serving dish and serve in sliced squares /slices.
• I think you can make the same dessert with strawberry, raspberry, mango, maybe lemon too..( I will update this space when I try out with some other fruits )

I made this dessert for our anniversary. I have a tradition of making something new just before or on the day of our anniversary for my family ...:) Earlier my husband has eaten something like a stack of pancakes masquerading as cake.. or cake as hard as a cookie or uncooked/sticky in the middle ... but, experience of years of trials, now I get good results even if I try a new recipe. This years trial is a very amazing recipe which is a keeper ...:) Hope you like it too....!! 

Homemade burger (vegetarian and non-vegetarian version)

Burgers, Coke and Fries... the most popular JUNK FOOD... which is so easily available , you give your order in a car at one window of a mcdonalds or a burger king and go ahead to the collecting window within 3-5 minutes, the order is ready.... u can eat in 5 minutes and regret it 10 minutes later... :) 

My kids love this combo, so I try to make a healthier version at home. I always used to make a vegetarian burger at home, but my friend Lakshmi shared an interesting chicken burger recipe which was a hit with my older kid. So here it is....both the recipes are almost same but they taste so different.....:) 

Chicken burger with lime-mayo dressing

Vegetarian burger with peri-peri sauce

Chili Paneer

Indo-chinese is a category of cuisine which is available only in India. Fusion of Indian and Chinese, it is as unique as it is delicious. Chili paneer is one of the popular recipes. I have made a healthier version.

I served it with brown rice and a quick-fix corn-prawn curry.

Chicken curry with fenugreek (methi murgh)

I had an unexpected visit to Little India again. I had a lunch with a dear friend and a food blogger Aruna Mani at a popular Bengali and Punjabi cuisine restaurant named Mustard. We had  "sarson ka saag"(a popular Punjabi cuisine vegetable made with mustard leaves)  and "makki ki roti"(a flat bread made with corn flour) for the very first time. The food at Mustard restaurant is absolutely awesome. I went to an Indian cuisine restaurant after a very long time, and I was amazed by the authenticity of the cuisine in a foreign country.  If you ever visit Singapore, you have to try this restaurant....:)

Some pictures of our lunch....!!

After lunch Aruna and I, looked around in the market for a particular store which sells Maharastrian grocery items, but it was closed.....so bought some other Indian vegetables instead. I bought cluster beans and fenugreek. 

I am trying to include more greens in my family's diet and methi is one of the favorite greens. You can use it with lentils, flat-breads or as just a dry vegetable sauteed with some garlic. Today's recipe uses fenugreek with chicken and it is a mouthwatering recipe. It is quite simple and easy to make, just put in one ingredient after the other, saute it for a while..and the curry in ready in about 25-30 minutes...!!

Picture of fresh methi/fenugreek leaves here.

Classic croissants and "Pain--au-chocolat"

We knead to bake #2: February 2013-- Classic Croissants

This blog post is very important to me. Not only did I manage to conquer my "one of the most difficult things to bake" and I started this blog because my facebook album link was not short enough to be posted on +Aparna Balasubramanian 's event of 12 breads in 2012.... :)  I still have to write a blog post for the 2 breads I made in the first month. Classic Croissants was the bread to make for the month of February 2013. I started my blog this month ...so I was very late to make the bread and even later with the post. But better late than never. This was one of the most exciting and amazing breads to make. I had seen this recipe long back on this video link. I always thought it was very challenging to roll the butter inside a flour dough......and also because of the quantity of butter used. Also, it's very cheap to buy a box of croissants from a local supermarket :)..... But, this 12 breads of 2013 challenge ...helped me overcome all these excuses to try the lovely flaky croissant and it's variant ""pain-au-chocolat"".. which is nothing but a chocolate stuffed croissant.

Have a look at my croissant.....isn't it beautiful.... :) 

I followed the recipe exactly as it was given and shown on Aparna's website here, with a very satisfying result.... :) If anyone wants to make the croissants ,do go through her page for tips and tricks and recipe links she has posted. 

Vegetable omelette

I am writing this post for a friend who rarely makes eggs and wanted to know how to make a simple omelette with loads of veges. That is my usual meal when I do not wish to spend a lot of time in cooking yet have something filling and healthy. I have used spinach, onions and capsicum today but you can use any vegetables of your choice like grated carrots, corn, potatoes, celery or other leafy vegetables of your choice. I usually serve the omelette as it is...or sandwiched between toasted slices of multi-grain or whole wheat bread.

Thai Basil chicken with coconut milk

A "oh so easy" recipe with burst of fresh flavors which is cooked in minutes yet it is super delicious.... and with very few, easy to find ingredients. I cook my rice in the microwave....so I washed and cleaned the rice, assembled the basil chicken ingredients and kept the rice in the microwave to cook...By the end of 22 minutes, when the rice was done the chicken curry was also done. A hot and delicious meal ready in minutes, it can't get easier than this.

Dau miu theplas (An Indian flat-bread with Chinese greens)

As I mentioned in my previous post here, I am trying out new ingredients and new methods of including local and fresh ingredients in my daily cooking. Dau miu greens are available cheaply in Singapore and can be used in Indian home cooking too. I used them to make a Japanese condiment which I posted before. Here, I will post a recipe of how I used them to make a flat-bread traditionally made with fenugreek green leaves. The fragrance and flavor or dau miu is lighter than fenugreek, but a bit similar.... to make "theplas" .... I feel the easiest way to make the "greens" enjoyable for kids is through a flat-bread. The green color makes it look very pretty and as you chop, mince it finely to mix with the dough you hardly can "see" it as a vegetable.... :) My facebook friend Hemali, shared the recipe ! 

 

Dau miu furikake ( 振り掛け / ふりかけ ) -- A Japanese condiment made with Chinese greens :)

Blogging is making me shop for unusual and unfamiliar ingredients which I see often in supermarkets here, but which I never dared to buy before as I din't know how to cook them. Nowadays, that part is easy.... you don't need to go to any expensive cooking schools to learn new stuff. For me google is the best teacher .... :) And blogging is teaching me a lot of things. My son loves Japanese food and he loves topping his rice (any rice whether it is Japanese, Indian, Thai, Jasmine...white or brown) with something called "furikake".  It is a dried mix of vegetables, fish, nori (seaweed), salt, sugar and MSG. I get his favorite brand from Japan, when my kind friends visit. 

I bought "Dau Miu" or "dou miao" greens (豆苗) from the local chinese supermarket, as I thought they looked similar to Indian "Methi", and I planned to to use them to make "theplas" which is a kind of another flat-bread. I did make it,(Here is the recipe for dau miu theplas/flat bread) but i used just 1/4 of the greens, so I used my favorite search engine and found the recipe of furikake here. It looked very easy and ready in about 30 minutes. More information about dau miu (pea shoots in English) at the wiki page.

An interesting recipe, to make kids eat their "green veges" ...:)

dau miu furikake